Experiment: Which Smokes Faster a Cut or a Punch?
Salvaged from our previous home.
Experiment: Which Smokes Faster a Cut or a Punch?
I posted this question a while back and thought at some point I would actually do an experiment to see if there was a difference in smoking time between cutting a cigar & punching one. While I am a notoriously slow smoker I wondered if the fact that I punch most of my cigars rather then cutting them impacted my smoke time. So with a 77 degree day I decided today was the day.
Methodology:
In order to be fair I needed two of the same cigar, with the same amount of rest so I selected 2 Corona Cigar 10th Anniversary Tres Capas which clock in at 5.25" x 60 each as shown below. At < $4.00 a stick these are a great cheap smoke, however I will admit that the larger 6.5 x 54 size had more rustic flavors than this smaller brother.
One stick received a medium punch cut and the other I lopped the top with my Xikar xi.
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/...pse1491ff8.jpg
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/...psa51aedde.jpg
I set-up my Ipad with the timer function and proceeded to alternate puffs between the two sticks at exactly 30-second intervals. In order to insure I did not double puff one stick twice, every time I took a draw I set the cigar down and picked up the other one and held it until it was time to take a puff and then repeated the process.
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/...psaf7416fc.jpg
In the pictures below the punch cut is always the cigar on the right side.
15 Minute Mark:
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/...psf721d181.jpg
30 Minute Mark:
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/...psf8a757a8.jpg
45 Minute Mark:
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/...ps5aa95f42.jpg
60 Minute Mark:
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/...ps68e29e91.jpg
90 Minute Mark:
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/...psaa39451f.jpg
Caveats:
Certainly there are always short comings to any experiment, here are the caveats to the results of mine.
* While I used 2 identical cigars, the choice of barber poles creates its own inherent challenges since there are 3 different wrappers that can burn unevenly
* Rolling- The cigars may have been rolled by different rollers creating draw or burn issues
* Lighting- While I tried to light them exactly the same one stick may have gotten off to a better start than the other
* Draw- I tried to draw each cigar at the same volume each time, but it would be impossible to take the same draw over 1.5 hours
* Burn- Each cigar required one touch up, but one may have gotten more assistance than the other
Results:
As you can see after 1.5 hours the punched stick burned significantly faster than the cut stick. I thought the cut top would have burned faster, my hypothesis is that the punched stick had a little more positive pressure in the draw which actually could have increased the burn rate. As they say in medicine, there is evidence that a punched cigar burns faster, but more research will need to be done. However, don't look for me to try this again! I was pretty loopy after taking a drag on two cigars every 30 seconds for an hour and a half. If you have the time and identical sticks with identical rest, you may want to try it yourself.
